Re-habbing...

Re-habbing.

That's a word, right?

It should be the name of a television show on Court TV, or whatever it is called now that it's switched hands at least four or five times since I watched the entire Jodi Arias trial on that channel...

I've always ALWAYS been a bit of an addict to real-life hot mess television: 

Intervention, 48 Hours, Forensic Files

Just the other day, as I was sitting on the toilet contemplating the purpose of life and why it was so dang hard to push out whatever I had eaten, I thought about the irony in the fact that I am an addict to the show "Intervention."

 I'm an addict. Addicted to watching other addicts and their hot mess of a life... all the while ignoring the fact that I've been an addict for a good 20+ years... my mom told me Saturday it's been a good 27 years or so... and my life is a hot mess of a life!

I always felt so much empathy for the characters on that show. 

I never could understand why they just wouldn't stop huffing canned air or drinking vodka ALL day long or selling their bodies in order to find their next hit of heroine. I never could understand how they would just allow their children to be taken from them because they couldn't, or wouldn't in my mind, just stop whatever it was they were doing.

I mean, what did they NOT see?

The rest of us are watching that show, thinking:

How could you do that to your kids?

How could you just let your kids be raised by other people?

Aren't your kids worth you going to rehab and getting better?

And all the while, I was an addict and didn't even recognize it.

Pathetic.

Shameful.

Embarrassing.

And now, enlightening.

And now, breathtakingly sad.

I have been sent books over the last week.

If you know me, you know I'm not a reader unless I want to be!

Right now, I can't get enough of it on my lunch breaks and on the treadmill!!

Current book: Eat Pray Love

Today, while sitting in the weeds and no longer judging the house across the street because they are literally ME in so many ways, I read this:

...Almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping in the next, with never so much as a week's breather in between. And I can't help but think that's been something of a liability on my path to maturity... I have boundary issues with men... I disappear into the person I "love." I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have EVERYTHING. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time - everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else. 

And, as I read this I could only picture one thing:

Me.

I am exhausted and depleted.

I am ready to break this crazy cycle that is me and my life.

The other thing I thought was relief.

Like, the deepest tummy breath I have ever taken was taken outside, under the slight shade of a dying tree on the side of our building.

Why?
Because I'm NOT ALONE.

Since reading some addiction testimonials at the end of last week, I was so sure that I was the only human being on the face of the earth with this addiction. Not a good feeling, Peeps.

But now, I feel a little less alone. 

A little less scared.

And I have the words that my mind and my heart have been feeling for decades.

Decades.